Lost Species poem 11: Fiona Owen

Not so much about a lost species as a lost individual. I requested this poem from Fiona Owen as it has lodged in my mind and heart from her rich and feeling-full book, mentioned below. It never fails to make me catch my breath in pain.
 
However, bats are vulnerable to habitat and food-source loss, and some are indeed endangered. While the pipistrelle bat is relatively common in GB, I heard last year that it's very under-represented in, for instance, Brittany.


Bat-thing

Response to Meredith Andrea’s ‘Pipistrelle’

It was like this: a high street place
of bodies busy with their heels
and soles, the ordinary tramp of feet
on wet pavements.
            I was little
but not as lost as the bit of brownish-black
on the pavement that a woman kicked to the side
with her pointy shoe. The way she curled
her nose at this bit of slack stuff
drew me closer, and down.

Toot of traffic was big around
pedestrians, their crossing and me
more afraid now for this flimsy thing
dropped from some dark into daylight
danger, now scraping its bit of brolly-self
against wall-edge, stranded amongst cigarette stubs
and chewing gum, the click-clack of heels, the swing
of shopping bags –

like live litter, this little
mouse-thing
        with webbed wings.

My mother’s voice, like ultrasonic singing,
sounded somewhere above, a kind
of echolocation. She fell upon me,
rainy-eyed.
Lost creature.
It could have been a Pipistrelle.



© Fiona Owen, from The Green Gate (Cinnamon Press, 2015)